Making an Elephant

The first documentary I made was called ’26 Miles and Running’, which was about my father running the New York Marathon, 8 weeks after 9/11. I was just 19 years old when I filmed it and have continued to make documentaries and short fiction films ever since.

My documentaries have always dealt with sections of society that are being marginalised or received negative press i.e. the elderly, people living with HIV, and fox hunters in Britain to name a few.

After seeing some of my work on the Internet a ’9/11 Truth’ group from East Anglia in Middle England contacted me asking if I would like to make a documentary about them hanging banners over motorway bridges that read ’Investigate 9/11’. I agreed finding the whole thing slightly amusing at the time that a group of people in England would do something like that.

This day of filming makes up the opening of the film which then spiralled into a feature which took me across Europe and back to New York for the 6th Anniversary of the attacks. Again, the documentary took an unexpected turn in direction when I met several first responders, who are sick and dying from the dust that they breathed in at Ground Zero in the weeks and months after 9/11.

This is not a film about ’conspiracy theories’

The Elephant In The Room is a documentary about the ’9/11 Truth Movement’, or more accurately, my experience of the movement. This whole filming process then lead me into meeting and documenting the plight of the first responders in New York. I don’t try and tell you what to think and it doesn’t matter to me if you think that the people in the film are talking rubbish. My only aim is to document my experience of this movement and related issues.

The first responders especially can at least be a topic of conversation that isn’t just dismissed off hand as conspiracy nonsense. Whatever your political beliefs are, the movement exists and it therefore deserves to be documented. I will no doubt be labelled as a ’conspiracy theorist’ by some, but my only aim was to make an honest and fair portrayal of my year making this film and the characters I met along the way.

The phrase ’the elephant in the room’ is an English idiom for an obvious truth that is being ignored or goes unaddressed. This is certainly true when talking of the ’9/11 Truth Movement’ and its handling by the mainstream media. This is by no means the only elephant in the room where the mainstream media is concerned, which is why it is extremely important for documentary filmmakers to tackle topics like this no matter how controversial they seem.

I hope that the film can be judged on its own merits and not be dismissed as conspiracy nonsense itself.

Who cares about "conspiracy nonsense" if the subject matter is nothing of the sort? Only morons and the perps who feed them their prejudices and opinions through the corporate media would consider it so out of hand. So why care for the opinions for morons?

Unfortunately the term "conspiracy theorist" has been imbued with such negative connotations it will be used against anyone who questions 9/11 orthodoxy. Recently there was a documentary about new research on the Turin Shroud and I recommended it to a friend who knows my views on 9/11. Immediately suspicious of my enthusiasm he said - "I'm not watching it if it's one of your conspiracy films". The absurdity of his position didn't occur to him. Was he only willing to watch if it proved the shroud genuine? After all, anything less would imply a sophisticated and elaborate conspiracy to fake a relic and delude the faithful.

In fact there seems to be a mainstream conspiracy against "conspiracists", "conspiracy thinking" and "conspiracy theory". The BBC's "Conspiracy Files" website carries articles on " Why we love conspiracy theories", " Plots, paranoia and blame", "The psychology of conspiracy" and a Conspiracy Test. From Time we learn "as divisive as they are, conspiracy theories are part of the process by which Americans deal with traumatic public events like Sept. 11. Conspiracy theories form around them like scar tissue. In a curious way, they're an American form of national mourning."

It's the perfect catch-all term to marginalize anyone willing to stray from the fold of state-sanctioned groupthink. Beyond its pejorative force as an intellectually respectable euphemism for "nut job" it implies paranoia with its attendant frailties of mind.

Conspiracy theorists, we are lead to believe, seek conspiratorial explanations in favour of more rational ones. The irony is that nothing could be less rational than avoiding conspiracy theory when interpreting any behaviour or event in which humans are involved. If you didn't take it as a given that factions get together to promote shared agendas at the expense of other factions, and do so by hiding and disguising their intent, you could make no sense of society, politics or a court of law. Conspiracy theory is fundamental to rational thinking.

The U.S. government's account of 9/11 involves a conspiracy theory, but apparently this is the kind we should believe in. So presumably it's not conspiracy theory as such that must be avoided, but paranoia. In short, suspecting terrorism from without is rational, suspecting it from within is paranoid.

No doubt the makers of Elephant in the Room will suffer the same nonsensical accusation - but I understand and applaud the different tac they have taken.

I know, but that's why not being intimated by some manufactured smear like "Conspiracy Theory" is so important because it's purpose is to effect people into either mindlessly ridiculing something or being afraid of ridicule, which all has the effect of maintaining the status quo. The "Conspiracy Theory" stereotype has to be smashed in relation to 9/11 Truth, and I think it is being. Most of the information is now very solid, the only nutty garbage that justifies the contrived "Conspiracy Theory" stereotype is the disinfo (crafted in my opinion to bring ridicule) like "no planes" "space beams" etc, and that junk has been identified for what it is and blasted out the airlock.

...please work on your grammar. (This goes for everyone.) As surely you've noticed, source-notions are appearing everywhere. The same sort of standard should be applied to all posts, be them notes or essays, comments or commentary. The best thing we can do for the movement is make it appear legitimate in all spheres, "blogging" or not, and the first step, always, is proofreading.

And I agree. It was a comment directed towards the editors of the site who are responsible for re-posting blog entries on the main page -- a little touching up here and there wouldn't hurt presentation-wise.

I have returned from the screening and this could turn out to be the most important documentary yet.

'The Elephant in the Room' is a thoughtful, well made film balancing some of the evidence (stand down, the collapses and WTC7) and the campaign both in the UK and the US. There are clips with Cynthia, Richard, William and Alex as well as extensive interviews with some of the first responders.

The evidence has been done to death and this, IMO, is a leap foward for the campaign for the greater public . This documentary has filled a gap that needed to be filled.